Disposant d'un peu de temps en avril prochain, Ian Gillan a confié qu'il serait prêt à travailler sur de nouveaux titres en compagnie de Tony Iommi, sans doute sous l'appellation Who Cares :
IAN GILLAN To Work With TONY IOMMI Early Next Year - "I’ve Got Some Free Dates Next April And We Are Planning To Get Together For A Week And See What Happens"
Hot Flashes
Posted on Sunday, July 31, 2011 at 16:19:54 EST
By Robert Gray
On December 7th, 1988, an earthquake hit the Spitak region of Armenia registering 6.9 on the Richter Scale. The response from the rock sphere would be Rock Aid Armenia, who – amongst other things – re-recorded DEEP PURPLE’s ‘Smoke On The Water’ with an all-star cast, including Deep Purple frontman Ian Gillan as well as BLACK SABBATH guitarist Tony Iommi.
“I suppose it all started about 20 years ago when I was touring the Soviet Union with my band – I remember the tour quite well,” confirms Ian, discussing the WhoCares project. “It was the second tour in fact of the Soviet Union; we took in Moscow, St. Petersburg, we went through the Ukraine and Georgia, through the Caucasus Mountains, Grozny, Chechnya, and ended up in Makhachkala in Dagestan. We then went down to Armenia and did three shows there at the Sports Arena in Yerevan, and I remember flying in actually. I was pretty sick at the time. We flew in over Mount Ararat and I was looking for Noah’s ark on top of this mountain (laughs), and during our time there I went down to Spitak which was the epicentre of the earthquake. It had happened a year before, and people were still wandering around in a daze. Not much was known about it. You get an earthquake now in Haiti or a tsunami or whatever and it’s on TV all over the world within seconds, but not then. I remember visiting Spitak as I said and I was being shown around by the man, and amongst all the other images that prompted me to write a song called ‘Pictures Of Hell’ (from 1991’s Toolbox) he told me that there was no music at all, that there hadn’t been any music for a year. No music on the radio, no music in the churches and even the birds weren’t singing. I said ‘Well, maybe when you’re ready we can do something about that’.”
